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Month: October 2017

Let’s be honest: we’d all love a little more room and a lot more space, wouldn’t we?

The UK has some of the smallest homes in Europe – and practically every household struggles to balance storage and living space.

Converting Lofts in West Sussex are not, of course, the only solution available to you: moving house or extending your house in other ways are all options.

So, what exactly are the benefits of converting your loft?

1. Add value to your house

There’s no need to just take our word for it. Property experts agree that loft conversions are one of the best ways you can invest in your home.

Housing Market Research has shown that your house value can increase by as much as 20%.

Nationwide revealed that loft conversions have the potential to increase the value of the average home by around £37,000.

There is no other form of home improvement that costs so comparatively little yet adds so much and, better still, the payback on your investment need not wait until you sell. With attractive tax breaks available for those renting a room in their house you may wish to use your loft space to take in a lodger or a foreign student and start making money from your extra space immediately.

2. Avoid the cost and upheaval of moving

It’s not only stamp duty, solicitor fees and property costs that continue to rise: the true cost of moving house seems to get higher every year.

One of the major benefits of a loft conversion is that you can stay in the same area, and this means not having to:

Add to your commute or find a new job.

Settle your children into a new school.

Go through the packing traumas and stress of moving house.

Consider this: stamp duty is often now equal to the cost of an entire loft conversion, so you not only gain more but you spend less.

3. Increase space (without losing it elsewhere)

With a loft conversion it’s not just that extra room you gain – a well-planned conversion can provide additional storage underneath your new stairs and decrease the strain on the rest of the rooms in your home as well.

What’s more, by using ‘dead’ space to create a room, conversions do not eat into your home’s invaluable outside space as extensions can. And, with the postage stamp-size gardens that are so typical of Brighton’s properties, this is a very real benefit.

4. Create a room with a view

We are so used to looking out onto the other houses on our street from our windows that it can be a truly delightful surprise when we gaze out of our loft room’s windows to take in the sea or the Downs in the distance.

Being higher up allows you to survey your local area from an entirely new perspective.

If you are surrounded in an area with a lot of trees that can be made into timber for construction, then you have to prepare the best wood drying kilns. These wood drying kilns can’t just be bought from the market. Most of the time, homeowners create their own kiln because they can freely choose the size of the kiln to store huge amounts of timber inside to go through the drying process. You’ve come to the right place – you will learn the basics of how to build the right kiln for drying your own timber

Mill up the wood

The first step is finding rough logs and timber. Many would argue that this is the most difficult process, but it is actually quite easy. There is always someone that is trying to get rid of some fallen tree or those that want to take down an already dead tree. You can get a lot of opportunities if you contact local arborists and tree trimmers because they can lead you to good timber. These people are making a living from trees. If you are able to offer them a fair price for the log, sometimes they will choose to sell it since it saves them the work of making them into firewood. You can also place an ad in your local paper and ask around who deals with any downed trees. You can find a lot of ways to do this, and if you try every method in finding wood, you will definitely find one. If you hear the term “windfall”, that is usually the sign that there are a lot of wood because of the wind storms.

When you’ve already gotten on your hands the wood you need, some local sawyers may even bring over their own sawmill and will saw the wood for you at a very reasonable rate. This will save you the time to saw huge logs to carry it straight to your home. But if you have your own sawmill, you don’t need their services at all.

Wood and Moisture

You need to seal the end grain of the timbers and logs or they split and crack as the moisture gets perspired. Its end grain must be seald up with the material that closes up the wood’s open pores. Some DIYers mix 50 percent wood glue and 50 percent water then lets its saturate at the ends for a couple of times. You also have the option of using wax or paint.

Air Drying

Before you make your best log kilns, you need to air dry your wood for a couple of months. This is to shed off naturally a small amount of water, at least losing 8 to 10 percent of moisture. Stack up the wood with a lot of stickers or spacers in order to give it good airflow. Some DIYers place plastic under the wood on the ground to keep humidity off the ground from affecting the timber.

If your house has black mould on the internal walls, this could be a warning sign which suggests your property is suffering from penetrating damp and unless dealt with quickly, can seriously affect your health. Mould and dampness is not something people generally enjoy living with and in some cases, constant dampness inside a house can lead to serious illness and breathing diseases, so this article is important for you to read and is NOT a thinly disguised sales pitch either! It is also worth noting that in many cases, there is quick or cheap fix to permanently cure damp and using a damp proofer kent company, you can get the right help.

Let’s get rid of that damp!

We are going to show you some tips for getting rid of damp in the home, but firstly let’s look at damp; what is it and why is it important to take action as soon as you find damp? Damp in the home is generally best summed up as water or moisture getting in where it should not be. The exterior walls, foundations, windows and roof of your property, if maintained correctly, will give years of trouble free existence and prevent against damp or mould appearing. If any of the above items are not kept in good condition, getting damp in the house is, to be honest, your own fault.

OK, let’s not be judgemental, after all, you could have just bought the house, or only discovered the existence of a problem in the structure, but whatever reason, it needs to be cured.

What is damp?

Damp is, as above, where water has got into the home, and onto surfaces, or into places, where it’s existence will encourage spreading of the affected area and the problem becoming much worse.

Damp comes in two main forms, penetrating damp where the water comes in through the walls, and rising damp,where the water in the ground that would normally be stopped by the damp proof course, somehow makes it way past that and UPWARDS into the house, always appearing at lower parts of the wall, no higher than 5 feet. There are some steps that you the home owner can take to get rid of mould, but in many cases, work would need to be done to the house to stop the cause of the problem, or any damp removal will be in vain because it will only come back again over time.

Black mould spores? Uh-oh.

When your internal walls become wet, they are an ideal breeding ground for damp mould spores, the worst kind of which are known as Stachybotrys chartarum , and this is a deadly strain which exists in an alarming number of homes in the UK.

The mycotoxins (naturally occurring chemicals produced by Mould) are toxic and can cause people to suffer toxic symptoms including: Respiratory and breathing problems, Haemorrhage problems, inflammation of the skin, Irritation of the mucous membranes, constant tiredness or the feeling like you are going to be sick.

Even if the source of the water is found and stopped, the mould can become powdery and this is when it starts to release the spores in the air inside the house.